House of Sibling Love: This is Kurt
by TaliesinTaleweaver
Summary: The first of a series in a world in which Mystique never abandoned Nightcrawler, this is the story of how a young Rogue meets the boy who will become her brother and best friend. If you haven't read any of my House of Sibling Love stories, start here.


Anna Marie was bored. She wasn't used to doing nothing. She was used to spending most of her time stealing, eating, scrounging from trash cans, running from cops, or trying to stay warm. Lounging around a hotel suite doing nothing pertaining to her immediate survival was more than a little foreign.

She crouched next to the wall, her head resting on her chin, staring at the burgundy carpet. "I don't have nothing to do," she lamented to the ant crawling across the floor before picking the insect up and putting it on the balcony.

She wandered back to the main room and slouched on an upholstered chair.

The door between the main room and one of the two bedrooms opened and the blue-skinned woman came in.

"_Bonjour_, ma'am," Anna Marie said.

The woman looked at her and smiled softly. "Hello. Are you doing all right?"

Anna Marie nodded, then shrugged. "Are you busy?"

"Yes, right now. Do you need something?"

Anna Marie sighed and shook her head. "No, ma'am, I'm fine."

The woman stared at Anna Marie for a moment, eyebrows drawn in thought. "Why don't you play with Kurt?"

"Mom!" the boy shouted from his room. The connecting door was open to reveal him draped on the bed like an old rag solving the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. His blue skin didn't scare Anna Marie but his tail and sharp teeth did. She didn't like to be near him unless the blue-skinned woman was there. "I'm hungry, Mom," he said. "Can we get somethin' to eat?"

The blue-skinned woman took a wad of bills from her pocket and set it on the table. "You can order room service, Kurt."

Kurt sighed, waving his tail in the air like a snake being charmed, like Anna Marie had seen the gypsies do. "Can't _she_ do it?" He sounded almost pleading as he pointed his finger at Anna Marie. "She's normal."

The blue-skinned woman sighed. "Kurt, she can't be older than seven–"

"It's okay, ma'am," Anna Marie said quickly. "I can do it, if he wants." The last she wanted was for Kurt to get angry at her. She didn't want to find out what getting bitten would be like.

The blue-skinned woman paused, as if deciding whether to humor her son or not. "Only if she wants to, Kurt," she said finally. Then to Anna Marie. "And you can stop calling me 'ma'am' and start calling me Raven."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Okay, Raven ma'am. Are you leaving, Raven ma'am?"

"Yes, I am." She went into the hall and shut the door.

Anna Marie was alone with demon-boy.

"So, you getting the room service?" Kurt asked, scribbling something on the newspaper.

"_Oui_. If you want."

"Why are you speaking French? That is French, isn't it?"

Anna Marie frowned. "Why are you speaking English?"

"Well, English _does_ happen to be the official language of the United States. So why French?" He straightened and Anna Marie flinched. Kurt looked hurt. "I'm not going to eat you, little Frenchwoman."

"I am not a Frenchwoman," Anna Marie said with injured dignity. "I'm American. I speak French because it's my—" she paused digging for the right word, gave up, and substituted. "The real language I speak."

Kurt laughed. "You mean your first language. All languages are real."

"I've spoken it since I can disremember."

"That's not a word."

"What isn't?"

"Disremember."

"It is too a word! I just used it!"

"That's not what makes something a word."

"Then what does?"

Kurt paused, frowned, his tail weaving eerily through the air. "If words are in use for a long time, and people agree that they're words, then they're words."

"_C'est stupid_. You made that up."

"Well, that's how it works," Kurt said.

Anna Marie didn't dare disagree with him again, but she still firmly believed he'd invented that on the fly to try to prove her wrong.

"Anyway," Kurt went on. "You didn't answer my question."

"What question?" Anna Marie snapped, irritable because she really wanted to fight Kurt but didn't dare.

"Why you speak French. Were your parents French immigrants?"

"No," Anna Marie retorted. She didn't know what an immigrant was, but it was something French and therefore obviously had nothing to do with her.

"Are you Cajun?"

"No."

"I think you are, and you're just too young to know anyway."

Anna Marie glared at him. "I am not to young for anything. _You _are too young."

"Sure you are," Kurt said comfortably, sounding twice his age. "You're a kiddie."

Anna Marie glared at him in speechless fury.

Kurt went back to his crossword puzzle, ignoring her anger. "Hey, what's a seven-letter word derived from Latin that means foolish?"

Anna Marie had the feeling he was talking to himself, but she couldn't resist butting in anyway. "Kurt-ordure, non?"

"Um, no, too long."

Anna Marie gawked at him. He didn't understand she was _insulting_ him? What was the point of insulting someone too stupid to know he was being insulted?

"I just called you garbage," she informed him so he could be suitably offended.

"Really? When? I didn't hear you. Ah ha! Asinine!" He scribbled letters into the white boxes.

Anna Marie turned and stalked to the couch, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at Kurt.

"Hey, you want to get room service?" Kurt asked suddenly. "What do you want?"

Anna Marie wavered, her desire for food warring with her comfortable wallowing in anger. Food won. "Okay."

Kurt did that blinking thing, appearing next to her and Anna Marie almost screamed. Why couldn't he just _walk_ like a normal person?

Kurt picked a laminated paper off the side-table and unfolded it, passing it to her. "What do you want?"

Anna Marie took one look at the words on the page and passed it back to him. "I can't read."

"You can't?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

Kurt took the paper back. "Okay, lunch items. Um, steak, you want steak?"

"What's that?"

"You don't know what steak is?"

Anna Marie shook her head. Should she know what steak was? "You go live in a trash can and see if _you_ know what a steak is."

"Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. It's just, I thought everyone knew what—oh, just shut up already, Kurt and tell her what steak is. It's meat, that's all. Cow. Cut up, nice and sort of chewy."

_Chewy? _In Anna Marie's experience if something was chewy, it usually had furry green growths on it. "That doesn't sound so good. Is there gumbo?"

"_Gumbo?_"

"Oui."

"What's that?"

"You don't know what gumbo is?" Anna Marie realized she'd just parroted Kurt, and the two stared at each for a brief moment, then Anna Marie giggled. Kurt grinned, then laughed, which made Anna Marie laugh even harder. When they finally managed to quiet themselves Kurt said, "Okay. So we'll call it even. Anyway, they have sandwiches, you want a sandwich?"

"What kind?"

"Pastrami, tuna, cheese and ham, beef. I think I'll have some chicken."

"I don't know, you choose."

"How about we'll get a couple different things then, and you taste all of them?"

"Okay."

"I'll call, and you give them a money."

"Won't it be weird if a little kid pays them?"

Kurt shrugged. "Tell them your mom is in the bathroom."

After the food arrived and Anna Marie had paid the man (she made Kurt count the money out ahead of time), Kurt drew up two chairs to the table and motioned for Anna Marie to sit down.

"All right," Kurt said, for no particular reason that Anna Marie could see. He took a piece of meat, put it on a plate, and handed it to her. "Here. This is what's known as steak."

Anna Marie frowned. "I thought I said I didn't want that."

"You did, but you _have_ to try steak, it's not optional. Kurt's rules."

Anna Marie cautiously poked at the food on her plate, then brought it to her mouth. It wasn't like she _wasn't_ going to eat food someone handed to her. It tasted fine, not as good as chicken, but no evidence of green fur.

"Well?"

"It's okay. C'n I have some more?"

Kurt laughed. "I thought you didn't like it!"

"Why does it matter if I like it or not? It's food, isn't it?"

Kurt grinned and handed Anna Marie a piece of crab. "Have you ever had one of these?"

Anna Marie took it and set it on her plate. "Yes, but not cooked so good."

"How'd you have yours?"

"I caught 'em and cooked 'em in a trash can. Then the cops run me off."

Kurt laughed, then looked embarrassed. "So, can I ask you something? Why do you have white hair? Are you a mutant?"

Anna Marie reached up and touched her hair. "I don't know, I never really thought about it. At least, not recently. . ." her voice trailed off as she sifted through seven years of memory. "I was born with it," she said finally. "I think?"

"I see. Are you through eating?"

Anna Marie looked down at her empty plate. "Oui."

Kurt waved his hand vaguely. "They'll come and take the stuff away later." He blinked to his room.

Anna Marie followed him slowly, not sure what else to do.

Kurt picked up his crossword puzzle again. Anna Marie sat cross-legged on the floor.

"Hey," Kurt said after a moment of chewing on his pencil. "Want to try something? I could teleport you if you like."

"_Teleport_? What's that?"

Kurt obligingly appeared at her side. "Teleporting."

"You mean you can teleport other people?"

Kurt nodded. "Sure. Want to try it?"

Before Anna Marie could object, he grabbed her hand and teleported. Anna Marie opened her eyes carefully, checking to make sure all her appendages were attached, feeling like she'd left her stomach on the other side of the room.

"Well, what do you think?" Kurt asked, grinning.

"I think you had better ask before you do that again, otherwise I'll punch you."

Kurt laughed. "You're interesting, Anna Marie."

"Are you insulting me?"

"No. I'm bored a lot, and you're not boring."

"Why are you bored?"

"Because I don't have a lot to do. Come on." He reached for her hand, but Anna Marie yanked away before he could teleport her. "I'll _walk._"

Kurt was standing in his room. "Suit yourself." When she came in, he unzipped one of the two suitcases pushed against the wall. "This is what I can carry with me, what can fit in these two bags." He reached into one of the suitcases and pulled out a Game Boy.

"You don't go outside much?"

"If you looked like me, would you?" He gestured with the Game Boy. "Want to play?"

"A game?"

"Well, yes?"

Anna Marie frowned. "I don't know how."

"Aw, it's easy. I'll teach you." He tapped a couple buttons. "So this is a fun game. You have these little creatures, and they fight each other."

Anna Marie shrugged. "Okay."

"So, how long are you going to be here?"

"Your mother said she would keep me, if I wanted her to," Anna Marie said slowly, checking Kurt's face are any signs of anger. She had assumed Raven had discussed it with her son, but as she apparently hadn't. "I told her I'd like that."

Kurt frowned. Anna Marie flinched.

"You mean like _keep_ keeping you?" Kurt asked. "Keep, like _forever_?"

Anna Marie nodded tentatively. "I guess?"

Kurt shrugged. "Guess it would make life more interesting, huh? Well, want to play Pokémon with me?"


End file.
